Healing some of life’s pains at Christmas
The loss of a loved one is painful, particularly at Christmastime when messages of love, family, and togetherness are everywhere.
In this feature, Healing for Christmas, the Jamaica Observer highlights the experiences of resilient people who use the pain and heartache to bring merriment during the season. The video feature is currently available on Jamaica Observer‘s official YouTube channel
In Moneague, St Ann, soup and corn vendor 60-year-old Charmaine Lug was dealt an unfair hand when her mother, Gloria Graham, and daughter, Opal Harrison, died in March 2022.
Lug told the Sunday Observer that her mother died after being bedridden for some time. Her daughter, on the other hand, fell ill and didn’t recover.
“It threw me off for a while. My daughter died and leave three children, ages 13, six, and two. So we have to take care of them and there is no help. So I’m trying a little thing right now to finance them to send to school and such delights. I’m still holding on,” she said.
Nonetheless, Lug said she always looks forward to Christmas, despite the fact that all the things that her mother used to do at Christmas remain.
“She used to look after the coconut oil; the one that you grater and make the cooking oil. She used to look after chocolate, sorrel, pudding, toto, rundown, and she used to sell on the stall with nice tangerine, orange, grapefruit,” Lug recalled, smiling.
“She always have nuff meat — chicken and pork and fish and goat. And we bake it on the grill, so we always love her. Nuff food we usually get. Our Christmas dinner did nice. We always have four different types of meat, rice and peas, and carrot juice, sour sop juice. So we always enjoy ourselves with mom cooking. Mom cooking is always the best. She leave the good cooking to us. That’s why we are still going on,” she said.
Lug told the Sunday Observer that now she is proud to be Santa Claus for her daughter’s children. However, instead of gifts they get “food. Good food. Nice food to eat. I don’t have the money to buy them the toys… they get it. A me haffi take care of them and send them to school, so the money nuh enough to go and buy dem toys like when their mother was here”.
Jermaine Higgins, CEO of HangKeyz and More, an art and woodcraft establishment, lost his father, Carl Higgins, in 2017.
Higgins was at work when he got a call about 3:00 pm from a neighbour who was trying to locate the elder Higgins. When the neighbour went inside their house, the elderly man was found dead.
“I was on the road from about nine o’ clock in the morning. After a while the friend called me back when he got inside the house and seh him see him [my father] lie down in the bathroom with blood running out of his nose. High blood pressure lick him head,” he told the Sunday Observer.
“That a the saddest thing weh ever happen in my life. But we have to give thanks same way. He was a great man,” he added.
Though his father’s passing brought sadness, when he reflects on all he has done at Christmastime over the years, a boyish smile comes across his face.
“Every Christmas him make sure him whitewash the walls and paint over the house. After him paint, him deal with the chickens. Him used to rear chickens at the back of the house and him used to make me pluck them… pluck the feathers and put them in the hot water,” Higgins recalled.
“Mi hold the little basin when him a cut the neck,” he added, laughing. “Food haffi cook and all these things. Him love him food. My father love him food. A so him do it at Christmas, so you know seh [you] have to take on what he left.”
He said that on Christmas night his father would unveil a box of firecrackers that always caught his attention as a young man.
“Him buy the case of clappers, and clappers a buss fi all 10 minutes non-stop,” he said.
Though they haven’t continued the chicken-rearing and firecrackers, Higgins said all the other traditions are maintained.
“Me and my brother take on everything now. Wi haffi do all of the whitewashing. And mi love the cooking… mi take that from my father. So I will do the cooking and gather the family and give thanks and bless up the place. Just have a joyful time and unity. Christmas is for unity, which is strength.”
Britannie Powell, a fourth-year University of Technology, Jamaica nursing student, remembers her grandmother Ellen Ellis, who died from COVID-19 on September 3, 2021. Like most grandmothers, she was the glue that kept the family together.
“September is the time for school and when I lost her, because I’m in nursing, a lot of her conditions were spoken about in class and that did affect my academics and my strength. It was very uncomfortable. Sometimes I would rather to leave class and not be there because I had to think about what she went through and we were separated during COVID, so I wasn’t able to be there to assist her with my new skills as a student nurse,” the Williamsfield, Manchester, resident told the Sunday Observer.
Powell, though still reeling from the loss, said she found healing in the joyful memories of her grandmother. She recalled sitting at Ellen’s feet as she combed her hair and assisting with Christmas dinner preparations.
“Anytime she is combing my hair and taking a long time and I put my hand in there, she just [slap] me with the comb,” she said, laughing and mimicking the action.
“It hurts, but that’s the thing that makes them. It brings back the memory of who they really are and what they meant to you. So the small things that we share, like singing Christmas carols or exchanging Christmas gifts on Christmas day, those are the memories I want to share of her and I want to make memories like that with my family and not just dwell on the sad part of things,” Powell continued.
In 2020 Walcott Allen, director of the Jamaica Nurses’ Association of Florida, lost his dad to COVID-19. He said his dad was the life of the family.
“Everyone looked to him for advice and so his passing caused some void in our family and we’ve coped, but whenever we get together at Christmas we have fond memories of him. Christmastime is a time when our family meets and a time of the year when we put away all our work and put away everything else and try to gather grandkids and kids; brothers, sisters meet and just have a good time as a family unit. It is a process and we continue to move on,” Allen said.
“He was a fun guy. He did all of the fun things and fortunately, or unfortunately, now I become him. I now have to do all the fun things — all the cooking, the baking, preparing the refreshments, the strong ones and the weak ones, just so that we can have a jolly good time during Christmas,” Allen told the Sunday Observer.
Offering a word of advice to families reeling from more recent losses, Allen said it is important that there is togetherness rather than solitude.
“Grieving is a process that comes natural. We have to realise that one thing is certain and that’s death. We don’t control that. And so, when it happens, one tends to sometimes be fearful and not understand why or what’s going to happen.
“Death is sure and so when it comes, even if we know it is, we fail to understand it. But we have to rely on our families, and when families come together it makes the process of grieving better. Talk about things. Talk about what’s really affecting you. Do not let it boil up in you. Talk about it with a friend or family and express yourself. If you have to cry, cry like hell. That’s the process.”
Patrick Roberts’s sister Nicola Mattis succumbed to cancer in October 2018 and left him in agony.
“It did really break us down. Mi just feel it for my little sister. A mi one little sister that from my mother side. Mi lose her very young. She died in October, and dem seh October is cancer month (Breast Cancer Awareness Month). Mi feel it. Mi did a seh mi prefer if a me drop out,” the maintenance worker said.
Now, when the season comes, Roberts remembers her because of the kindness and thoughtfulness she displayed. The memories put a smile on his face.
“If a even a gift. If I don’t get anything in the year from January come down, I know that if it is even a gift, mi a get it from my sister. Even for my son, she a bring him gift come give him. So she will always be remembered. Mi miss her a lot. And a nuh me alone, ah the whole family. She is well missed.